We arrived in Vienna late in the evening, but thankfully it was super easy to get from the airport to the city center (where our hotel was)...I mean stupidly simple. If you haven't traveled much and are hesitant about traveling to a foreign country, I highly recommend Austria. Friendly people, everyone speaks English, safe, clean, beautiful and YUMMY food!!
We were greeted with chilled champagne in our hotel room - well done Bryn! After our little night caps we hit the sak, after all it was late and we had lots to explore the next day!
Of course you know that this was a surprise trip for me. I knew we were going somewhere, but Bryn wouldn't tell me where. He did ask me what "must-do/see" things there were in Europe, and one I said was that if we went to Vienna, I HAD to go to the Spanish Riding School to see the Lipizzaners perform. Well, here we were in beautiful Vienna. The first thing Bryn told me was that he looked into it, and it wasn't the season for performances, but we could visit the school.
Well, the next morning we had a nice breakfast at the hotel, then bundled up to explore (it was COLD!!). One of the first places we happened to come across was the Spanish Riding School in the Hapsburg Palace.
There was a gift shop, so I had to go in. That was when we saw the sign that there was a performance that morning - starting in about an hour! We grabbed tickets and went to chill in the Starbucks across the street until show time.
It was raining when the show let out, so we snapped up some umbrellas from a souvenir shop and continued wandering. The rain wasn't seeming to let up, so we decided it would be a good day to visit the Art History Museum, the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was packed, but impressive, filled with Roman and Greek artifacts and loads of paintings by lots of big names. (These pictures are in no particular order...)
Museum cafe where we snagged a table for some late lunch...our first sausages in Austria! Not as good as the street vendor ones yet to come, but better than anything we can get here.
We finally decided that we had seen all the art we could handle for one day and headed back out into the cold rain. Luckily for us there was a Christmas Market right outside of the museum, so we loaded up with some hot gluhwein (mulled wine) to sip on as we wandered through the twinkling streets back to the hotel to thaw out!
Day one was a little damp, but we didn't let it bother us - in fact it was a nice change from the dry heat we have 365 days a year! It made outdoor photos a bit difficult, but don't worry, there are tons of gorgeous photos yet to come!!
